Human and Cosmic Thought:
Publisher Note

The following lectures were given by Rudolf Steiner to an audience familiar with the background and fundamental principles of his anthroposophical teaching. In his autobiography, The Course of My Life, he emphasises the distinction between his written works on the one hand and, on the other, reports (not personally revised by him) of lectures which were given as oral communications and were not originally intended for print. For an intelligent appreciation of the lectures — and especially in the case of those printed here — it should be borne in mind that certain premises were taken for granted when the words were spoken. “These premises,” Rudolf Steiner writes, “include at the very least, the anthroposophical knowledge of Man and of the Cosmos in its spiritual essence, also what may be called ‘anthroposophical history’, told as an outcome of research into the spiritual world.”

*   *   *

A brief list of publications in English translation recommended for reading in connection with the following lectures, and a summarised plan of the Complete Edition of Rudolf Steiner's works in the original German will be found at the end of the present volume.